What is it about?
While training students to new literacy and critical thinking has been recognized for several decades, it seems even more crucial today as education is presented as a lever to fight against fake news. Preservice teachers, both so-called digital natives at the cutting edge of the social web and tomorrow’s educators, represent a useful object of study. Using a quantitative methodology, this article is part of sequential mixed design research aiming to describe the level of preservice teachers’ (n = 245) critical thinking in three French-speaking nations: Wallonia, France, and Quebec. We aimed to see to what extent critical thinking skills (measured with a translated version of the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment; Halpern, 2016) can notably be influenced by metaliteracy self-efficacy. Metaliteracy is a concept that aims to join information, digital, and media literacy providing a comprehensive framework “for engaging with individuals and ideas in digital environments” (Mackey and Jacobson, 2011, p. 70).
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Why is it important?
We establish the influence of individual determinants such as the feelings of self-efficacy in metaliteracy as well as the belief in the likelihood of becoming a teacher. We propose a model predicting the critical thinking skills based on self-efficacy in critical thinking and metaliteracy, the type of training, and the interaction between employment and the country of study.
Perspectives
Considering contemporary information issues and infodemic phenomena, critical thinking skills should be developed among preservice teachers. There is a significant positive correlation between metaliteracy self-efficacy and critical thinking skills. Pre-service teachers’ country of study, as well as their training trajectory, seems to influence their critical thinking skills. Involvement in professional life also appears to promote critical thinking skills.
Florent Michelot
Universite de Moncton
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A transnational comparative study of preservice teachers’ critical thinking skills and metaliteracy self-efficacy, Higher Education Skills and Work-based Learning, February 2022, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/heswbl-10-2021-0191.
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Resources
Fausses nouvelles: les aspirants enseignants critiques, mais peu formés
Les futurs enseignants québécois sont très peu formés à débusquer des éléments comme les fausses nouvelles et les théories du complot, ce qui ne les empêche pas d’avoir une pensée critique plutôt développée par rapport à leurs collègues belges et français, a découvert un chercheur en éducation de l’Université de Montréal. Il y a néanmoins urgence à aider les enseignants de la province, dit-il.
Les enseignants, peu formés pour débusquer les fausses nouvelles
Entrevue à Radio Canada Bas-St-Laurent
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